Marcos urged: Wage war against poverty

CEBU, Philippines — Lawyer Vic Rodriguez, former chief of staff and spokesperson of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., has called on the chief executive to  wage war against poverty and not of China.

Rodriguez made the call in yesterday s Maisug national day of protest where a local Maisug movement, headed by Pamela Baricuatro, was also launched in Cebu.

Rodriguez said the movement seeks to raise awareness and advocate for important societal issues such as Transparency, Accountability, and Peace and Security.

He urged the Marcos administration to focus on  freedom from hunger and poverty  instead of  waging war  against China. Rodriguez said the government can defend the flag by choosing peace, unity and solidarity.

The former executive secretary also lambasted the administration s various ayuda programs by calling them as mere political propaganda and is not meant to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. He added that the administration should wage a war against poverty, hunger, unemployment not waging a war against China.

Rodriguez said that the Marcos administration should be transparent as to where the P800 million out of the P5.6 trillion budget for 2024 will go and how this will be spent.

In a separate statement, the HNM-Transparency, Accountability, Peace & Security (HNM-TAPS) said that honeymoon with the Marcos administration is over.

 For two years, the nation tried to keep up with all his shortcomings and excesses with the hope that it was just part of the adjustment period with a new president and a new administration. Not anymore. Under Pres. Marcos, the gains that the country enjoyed during the term of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte have gone up in smoke,  it said.

According to the group, in just two years the Marcos administration has caused the peso to drop to P58.8 against the dollar.  When the peso drops, the price of everything else goes up which makes the country very unstable, it said.

It said that instead of addressing the issue of incompetence, the Marcos administration focused its energy on its shameless obsession with Charter Change.

 The intention is to lift the term limits to allow not just the incumbent but the Marcos family to hold on to power,  it said.   It added that rallies have been cancelled, disrupted and obstructed.

The group cited the case of Davao del Norte Governor Edwin Jubahib and Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama who were allegedly suspended because they resisted pressures to cancel rallies in their areas of jurisdiction.

Rama s preventive suspension was due to his administration s failure to pay the salaries of three regular employees at the City Assessor s Office. Simultaneous protest actions were held yesterday across the country as well as in Paris, Hongkong, and Japan.

 In Cebu, the Maisug movement offered and Mass and conducted a candle lighting activity for peace and called for the de-escalation of tension at the West Philippine Sea.

 This is a call for every Filipino who loves his country, his people, his family and himself. This is the challenge of our generation to defend the flag,  the group added.   (CEBU NEWS)